Daughter of the Father
by Dark-Eyed-Junco
Summary: Rose Wilson, only a little girl, has no idea who her father is. Or at least she didn't, until a gentleman named Wintergreen takes her to him. She won't be going back home.


(Author's note: _Rose Wilson is not a teenager in this story as she is quite a few years younger than the original Titans in the comics; she's therefore still in the single digits here_.)

The plane ride was long enough that Will was grateful he'd brought an off-brand tablet to distract the girl. She wasn't loud, nor did she wander the cramped cabin of the small private plane, but her unblinking stare and pale countenance, etched with secret thoughts, began to unnerve him-which was itself unusual. Silently, she tapped the screen of the device and smiled faintly, watching videos of tumbling kittens or nature documentaries.

They'd had to take several small planes to reach their destination, and altogether it took nearly three days. Will paid for every flight in cash, and he also made the girl wear her hood up as much as possible. He'd also dyed her hair before their departure from Thailand, so instead of the shock of natural white, she appeared as any other dark-haired Hmong child. Contact lenses hadn't been available, so her eyes still peered out from the hood of her rim with their original icy blue.

 _Those blue eyes_ , he thought. How did one of the old legends describe the Nordic aristocrats? _Tall, with snakish, cold eyes._ Not the eyes of a typical girl raised in Thailand. No doubt she'd been an exotic fixture in her small community.

When they landed in the US, she asked if they were home.

"Not yet," he told her. "We still have a ways to go."

They took a car. He drove. Once, they stopped at a diner and he told her to get anything she wanted. She pointed at the image of the pancakes and asked for a cola. He ordered a slice of pie and hot tea.

Back in the car, they reached the edge of the city in just under an hour.

"I need you to follow me very closely, Rose," he told her after letting her out of the car. "We can't make noise or attract attention. Do you understand?"

She leaned against his leg, and nodded. Again he noted the depths of her eyes. Caution was not a foreign concept to her.

The new base was, like the rest had been, subterranean: his employer had moved operations into the old H.I.V.E Academy, which had been almost unsalvageable after Brother Blood's reign. But over a year, an extensive portion of it had been rebuilt to suit different needs, and the bright walls had been replaced with the dark, metallic surfaces its new owner preferred.

The base was dimly lit as always. The master of the base preferred the dark. Perhaps it made him feel more secure; certainly it enhanced one of his favorite things: his endless supply of viewscreens, through which he monitored the surrounding city for sometimes hours at a time. The new command room contained enough screens to cover an entire wall, and a platform had been built to better view the ones that reached to the ceiling.

After two re-purposed H.I.V.E. droids allowed them entrance into a virtually empty antechamber, dressed only in the industrial cogs and pistons that were half-practical, half-aesthetic. Will knelt down in front of his charge. Their relationship was essentially over now.

"Why is it so dark, Mr. Wintergreen?" That may have been the longest sentence she'd spoken since he'd met her nearly a week ago.

Wintergreen patted her shoulder. "It's for protection. The darkness is another layer of security."

She looked at the floor. "You are...staying?"

"No, my dear. I will be back, but I'm needed elsewhere for a while. I promise you'll be taken care of." It was a lie-he wasn't needed anywhere. But he was ordered to not be here; to not be here as a distraction. Will understood the logic. Until now, he'd operated _en loco parentis_ , and the child had consciously or not started to grow attached to him. That simply could not be.

" _No_ ," she said, with sudden force. Her little fists clenched.

"Yes." Will smiled at her tolerantly. "You'll forget all about me soon. You have a whole new life now, Rose! And you'll have someone who will give you more attention than you could ever want. I'm getting a little old, you know."

His phone beeped. He didn't bother to check who had messaged him. Standing, Will brushed the creases from his suit and took her hand. She gripped his hand tightly, sensing a change, from the way Will stared expectantly at the door. Eventually, it opened, and Rose pulled back against him.

"Master Slade," he said to the newcomer, who left the threshold. "This is Rose." Rose stood stock-still, too enthralled to run toward or away from the man. Wintergreen had described him, but now she was staring at the real thing.

Slade approached and knelt in front of her slowly, the way one might to placate a jittery animal. Wintergreen pulled away his hand and stepped aide.

For what felt like a frozen eternity, his employer only studied the girl intently. Slade was, strangely, tensed like the girl standing stock-still in front of him.

 _Well, it has been nearly two decades, since_ … Will abruptly cut off the thought. He didn't dare even think it around Slade.

When time picked up again, Slade at last reached out; extended one hand to the stunned girl. For a moment, Will thought he would pull her into his embrace; instead, Slade grasped several strands of her dark hair and regarded it with distaste.

"It's black," he said flatly. "Wintergreen…?"

"Er, yes. Very sorry, sir, but I had no choice. She'd have attracted too much attention, a little girl with pure white hair."

"I see..." Slade gazed penetratingly at Rose, who looked like a tiny animal he'd mesmerized. "Do you know who I am?" he asked her.

"Y-yes," she managed.

"Who am I?"

"My...mama….'s...?"

"I am your father." Slade gripped her shoulders, though not roughly. "I knew your mother over nine years ago. We met in Thailand. You are my daughter."

"...y-es…" she said weakly.

 _Poor thing. Can barely process it all_. As far as he had been able to uncover, Rose's mother had never told her daughter about Slade; had never claimed him to be dead, but never indicated he was still around, either. Lillian seemed to have raised the girl with the impression that a father was not an option for her life. And while he'd explained everything as best he could, Rose seemed to only understand it intellectually.

"Who am I?" Slade asked her again.

"Father," she said, barely audible.

This time, Slade pulled her into his arms. For a moment, the girl recoiled, perhaps only out of instinct, but Slade deftly picked her up and stood with her against his chest. After a few moments, she stopped resisting, though she became very stiff, looking at Wintergreen with wide-eyed confusion and apprehension; perhaps, being a child, she recognized the safety of the gesture, but certainly not the person behind it.

"You can go," Slade said, as his daughter girl curled up in his arms in an uncertain, quiet ball. She risked only a brief glance up at her father before burying her face in his chest.

The conflict was heart-breaking, but she'd get used to him. He was her father, after all. And Slade wasn't exactly out of his element, just out practice.

"Wintergreen?" Slade said a little more firmly.

"Yes, sir?"

"I said you're dismissed. You can leave in the morning."

"Of course, sir. My apologies. Good luck, sir."

"I don't need luck," Slade muttered as he looked down at his daughter.

Will hoped that when he returned, Rose wasn't still a withdrawn, barely verbal shell. He also hoped she wasn't broken any more than she already was.

 _Remember, Slade, she's only a child._ _Don't forget what happened when you tried to force your paternal issues in the past._ Though he'd not been there for those two fiascos, he'd seen the fallout. In fact, for almost a year after the last ill-conceived, pseudo-adoption attempt, Will had assumed Slade to be dead.

Hopefully, having his own flesh and blood would mellow him out a little. And with a child so traumatized and fragile, maybe he'd be forced to use a lighter touch.

Someone who shared a less complicated history with Slade might have condemned Will for his complicity in letting an unrepentant criminal assume the heavy responsibility of raising a child. But Rose's mother was dead, and Rose wasn't capable of taking care of herself. It was natural for her to be with her father.

And Slade would never have forgiven him otherwise.

 _I'll make sure he does it right this time,_ he thought. _I'll keep an eye on them both. I'll put my foot down, if I have to._

~.~.~

With Wintergreen gone, Slade carried Rose deeper into the compound. Normally he'd expect her to walk-she was nine, after all, even if she looked younger-but he didn't want to let her go. No one was lurking, waiting to snatch her away, but he wasn't ready to relinquish her just yet, not even in his own fortified and secret haunt.

He'd waited only a few days for Wintergreen to return Stateside, but it had been an agonizing few days. The impatience and eager anticipation - crowding out all other thoughts, preoccupying him day and night - was over and he finally had his daughter; a daughter he'd only just learned about, but now that she was here it already felt as normal and right as if he'd signed her birth certificate himself.

He'd nearly gone to Thailand to get her, but it would have only confused things further. Though he did intend to go eventually. The man responsible for the death of Lillian had to be punished. Slade also intended to retrace the past several years of her life, and that of their daughter. Despite their estrangement for the last decade, he did have a degree of responsibility toward Lillian. After all, she'd given him a child. She'd also hidden that child from him, but Lillian had always been a shrewd woman. It might have been for the best that Rose be kept away until she was older. After two failed apprentices, Slade didn't want to think about what might have happened if he'd known about Rose from the beginning.

 _It doesn't matter. She's mine now. Only Wintergreen knows she's here. Anyone who knew her mother will assume she died too, or fell through society's cracks, and they'll write her off like any other orphan._

At some point, Rose fell asleep, no doubt exhausted from several days of travel. Slade sat down with her at a table in his workroom. The hard, artificial light from the monitors were enough to allow him to examine her features more closely. He was annoyed again that Wintergreen had dyed her hair. It made all the sense in the world but he wanted to see the winter-white color she'd inherited from him. Tomorrow, he'd research safe chemicals to wash out the dye. At least he'd been able to look into her eyes, and see the familiar blue there.

Rose possessed a lot of her mother's influence overall, though. Lillian had belonged to a disenfranchised minority group dispersed throughout the Asian continent due to various ancient ills. Her ancestors had fled to Cambodia, and in her adult life she'd been forced to escape to Thailand. Slade had been the one to assist her at the time. He'd been fleeing from strifes of his own, already teetering on the edge of alienation from his former life.

 _So much conflict in our genes,_ Slade thought as he gazed at his sleeping daughter. He'd have to tell Rose, when she had more understanding, that she was heir to a strong legacy. She needed to know she had to carry it on.

 _And as for her legacy, what do I call her? Rose Worth after her mother? Or…?_

His former life and name was dead to him. But he also wanted to connect Rose to him. And the connection needed to be confirmed beyond his assertions that she was his. He needed to make it _official,_ at least in her understanding.

He put her to bed, in a room quickly set aside for her. The bed was just a cot, but more than large enough for her, and she'd have better soon. For now, her makeshift bedroom was across from his own room. After laying her down, though, he didn't retreat to it. Instead he took up the chair in the corner. There was no point in pretending that he could sleep.

~.~.~

Rose woke and sat up in a room that looked a lot like a cell, on a slightly squeaky but comfortable mattress. A strange man occupied in the corner. She jumped back, before she recognized the stranger's attire. But his unusual mask had been removed. He wore an eyepatch on the right side of his face; why hadn't she noticed before that he only had one eye? Perhaps because she'd kept her head down as much as possible, she'd barely registered what little she'd seen at the time, but now it was very obvious.

"Rose," he said, back straightening slightly. "Did you sleep well?"

She nodded; didn't know what to say beyond that.

"Come here," he said.

Rose crawled off the bed and approached him slowly. Even without the mask, he still looked really intimidating. And his sharp face was carved with a dormant severity she didn't want to wake up. But there was something else.

 _He looks like me_ , she thought.

The children she'd played with growing up - even her friends - had sometimes called her "old woman" because of her hair. This man wasn't very old - not exactly, although he was definitely old enough to be her father - but his hair had the same snowy color as hers; a thin bit of white facial hair as well.

Rose didn't want to stand at attention. Neither did she feel comfortable crawling onto his knee. She knelt down and sat on her heels in front of him, just barely within reach, and she hoped he didn't drag her any closer.

"Rose," he said; his voice seemed tinged with a smile, but she didn't look to check. "Why are you so afraid?"

She could have said a lot of things. Instead, she shrugged helplessly, still avoiding eye contact.

He got up and pulled her closer, standing her up in front of him, then sat down again. He kept his hands around her arms, blocking her in.

"Look at me, Rose. I'm not going to hurt you." The tone remained conversational, but reminded her of some of her teachers. It was the tone that expected her to do whatever he said.

She looked him in the face, and kept her expression as neutral as possible. Inwardly, her stomach churned.

He smiled, appeased. It was a slightly uneven, sharp smile, and it increased the lines around his mouth.

"That's better," he said. "This is your home now, and I don't want to see any more timid displays. You're not a prisoner here. You're my daughter, Rose Wilson."

"Rose Worth," she corrected automatically.

"No," he said. "You're going to have to accept that your mother's gone. Her name won't do you any good. From now on, your name is Rose Wilson, and you're _my_ daughter."

"O-okay."

"I know it doesn't make sense now, but trust me; you'll learn. You are my daughter just as much as Lillian was your mother." He reached out and touched her face. "We're alike, you and I. You see the resemblance, don't you?"

Haltingly, Rose nodded, though not just to placate him. "Yes…" she admitted.

"Yes _what_?" he prompted.

"Yes...father?"

"That's right." He stood up, mask in hand. He clasped it back to his face, clicking it together behind his head. Rose found herself staring at the smooth, black half of the mask's right side. He looked...lopsided, now that she really studied him.

 _This strange man is really my father?_ Her mother had been a little "eccentric," to quote the gossips in town, but her father was way beyond that.

"Why…" She searched for the right words. "Why do you wear that?"

"This is who I am," he told her. "This is my real face." He held out his hand to her. Automatically, she took it.

"I forgot to ask," he said. "Are you hungry?"

"Yes."

"Wintergreen prepared food for you, before he left. You may have as much as you want."

Hearing the nice old man's name brought an ache to her nervous stomach. But she allowed herself to be led out of the room. If Wintergreen, who had saved her, claimed this man really was her father, then maybe he was. And if Wintergreen had left her with him, then surely it was for the best.

Her father sat across from her while she ate. Maybe she would have eaten more, but his presence kept her self-conscious. All he did was stare. After she was done, he said, "I'm sure you still feel very out of your element. You must have questions you want to ask."

"Did you marry Mama?"

His eye widened for a half-second behind the mask. For another half-second, he regarded her, head tilting slightly - like an animal, regarding something baffling.

"No," he said. "No, don't be naive."

"But...you love her?"

"I think you meant to speak in the _past_ tense," he said sharply. "But, to answer your question - it was a long time ago. I don't know."

"And me?" she asked meekly.

He again regarded her strangely. She immediately regretted asking. But it would have made things so much easier if he'd just said _yes_ and she could _trust_ him.

"I will give you more than just parental love, Rose," he said after a pensive beat, in a surprisingly subdued tone. "Your growth and success are my world now. I will teach you everything your mother couldn't. I will always be here with you."

"Okay," she murmured.

She didn't know what that even meant. But she could tell that whatever it did mean, he wasn't lying.

 _He_ meant it.

(Tbc?)


End file.
